Elovia

Welcome to the forum, Sam. While not necessarily a Home Designer answer ... you may want to take a look at the US Consumer Product Safety Commission's guidelines for playground equipment: http://playgroundsafety.org/standards/cpsc Even if you're not in the U.S., it doesn't hurt to see the standards that Professionals use when laying out playgrounds and choosing playground equipment. Good luck.

Here is some generic advice for working with sloped soffits, not particularly for the requested application ... Unless you're placing a sloped soffit that follows a roof plane (i.e., where the slope is automatically configured), the software requires the user to know and input the elevations of the upper and lower ends of the slope. When placing a free hanging sloped soffit, I highly recommend using a CAD line in a backclipped cross section camera to gather the required input information, and then fit the sloped soffit to the CAD line. This method can save a lot of frustrating "trial and error" process of getting a sloped soffit to precisely fit the intended application. Good luck.

You'll most likely need to create and save a custom material and then set that material as the default in the Default Settings -> Materials dialog. If you've already created an elaborate plan and want to see how the material color combinaton looks, the Dollhouse view, Eyedropper, and Spray Can tools will be your friends ... but only if you are careful about how you use them; that is, pay particularly close attention to the Spray Can edit sub-tools and know what each does when applied to your model. Good luck.

Welcome to the forum. We were all new once. The software is telling you that you have turned off angle snaps. In the Menu -> Edit -> Snap Settings -> Angle Snaps (toggle on) and the cursor icon will go away. Alternately, F10 is the default key setting to toggle them on and off. In general, you want to design with angle snaps on so that walls end up parallel and/or perpendicular. If angle snaps are turned off, it is easy to propogate inaccuracies in the design which can lead to frustration. If you need a non-standard angle, it is better to make that adjustment after initially drawing the object either by holding down the CTRL-key and dragging, or by using the Transform/Replicate tool to rotate to a precise angle of rotation. Hope this helps.

As far as I know, HDPro only has one layout, and that is one of the limitations of the software. The much more powerful (and expensive) Chief Architect X-series allows creation of new layers and multiple layouts, but that option is not available to Home Designer titles.

Here is a post on the legacy forum wherein I showed this type of window system built from soffits: http://hometalk.homedesignersoftware.com/showthread.php?15627-How-to-build-a-glass-wall-corner-like-this Given sufficient time and determination, almost anything can be built ... almost.

The tip comes with a courtesy nod to Katalyst who mentioned it (or something very similar) while assisting another user on the old forum ... from that comment, I had a "lightbulb" moment and began to further explore slab objects beyond their intended obvious use. Pardon the pun, but it sometimes helps to think outside of the box.

You don't need to use the "upper pitch" option for the roof that you want. That option is used primarily for a gambrel roof (aka barn roof) or a gull wing roof (the concave version of a barn roof). The baseline is the interception of the roof plane and a vertical line projected upward from the outer edge of the wall's sill plate. You would input a value in either the "start at height" or the "in from baseline" fields to determine where the "hinge" of the gambrel or gullwing roof plane would occur; the software will calculate the other value that you did not input from the pitch input. You should be able to set the outer wall height by temporarily creating a wall below the center ridge that divides your upper floor in half for the full length of the building. Then in the room specification dialog for each half, set the ceiling height to the desired outer wall height. Set each roof plane pitch in the outer wall's specification dialog (roof tab, or roof line item in the selection box), thus overriding the defaults set in the build roof dialog. Turn off the auto-rebuild roof option, delete your temporary wall, and set the room's ceiling height to the desired finished height. If you're looking to create a cathedral ceiling, simply uncheck "ceiling over this room" in the room specification dialog. The roof that you're attempting to make is easily done in Pro, but unfortunately not as easily done in Architectural (I understand that is the software title you're using). You have a couple options: have a Chief Architect X6 user create the roof plane in your model for you (and then set the plan to be editable by you), upgrade to Pro and do it yourself, or as you suggest fake it using other methods (I'm not sure if Home Designer Architectural has sloped soffits, but if so, I'd start there). Good luck.

Yes. For years, I used soffits as you described and lamented their limited use, but then learned a different method. Now before I describe the new method, I'll add a disclaimer that whatever you choose to do, choose it for a given purpose; that purpose may simply be to give a 3D visual from the model, or it may be to assist with framing or inclusion on the material list. The method I'll describe is for the former (a visual), not necessarily for the latter two, and if you want framing and all those other goodies, then you may need to add and/or account for them yourself manually. That said ... use a slab instead of soffits. One of the biggest advantages to using a slab is that you can then create custom shapes - including vertical surfaces curved in the horizontal plane. Without walking you through the entire process, I'll just say that you can create a slab with a hole in the middle by using the break line tool and wrapping the slab around the room in sequential fashion. Recognize that a 45° triangle has equal length sides, so again use the break line tool to create a square "stub out" in the corner, and then drag the exposed point of the square to one of the side corners while holding the Alt-key. Go around to each corner and do the same to create an octogonal shaped hole in an otherwise square slab. In the slab's specification dialog, you should set the height of the slab's top to the elevation of your room's ceiling, and set the slab thickness to be whatever depth you desire for the tray. Change the material, and you're good to go. Oh, one last thing ... did you want or need crown molding inside your tray? If so, either start with a custom countertop instead of a slab, and add molding via the countertop's specification dialog, or convert your slab to a custom countertop via the conversion tool (and check other settings to ensure they didn't change due to the automatic program defaults). Good luck, and hope this helps.

When you open a file, the computer loads a copy of the file into memory where you then can manipulate it using the software tools. If you use the "Save" command, then the file in memory will be copied back to the file on disk, overwriting the original file's contents. If you instead use a "Save As" command, then a new file on disk will be created from the file in memory. Normally, when you use the "Save As" command, you will be prompted for a new file name under which to save it. If you use the same file name as the original file, the software should prompt you that the file already exists and asks you if you want to save it anyway. If you say yes, then the original file will be overwritten. If you say no, then you will need to enter a new file name to save to. Using the "Save As" command is a common method for creating different versions of a design.

Floors are not necessarily equivalent to elevation, although many homes are built with all rooms on a given Floor at the same elevation. A good analogy might be to think of your model as though it were drawn on pages in a book, with model components shown on one page that are directly above the model components shown on the preceeding page, but the elevation of any room on that page may be different from other rooms also on that same page. It is quite possible to have, for example, a garage slab that is several feet lower than the flooring of other rooms on the same Floor of the model. The room defaults establish the elevation on which a newly created room will be placed, but that doesn't prevent you from manually changing the elevation of the flooring surface as long as you keep in mind how that change would affect other portions of the model directly above and below the room. Trouble occurs when changes to one floor have unintended consequences to model components on another floor. Similarly, stair behavior changes significantly depending on if you're connecting two different Floors, or two different elevations on the same Floor. Good luck.

Welcome to the forum. I don't see why a person couldn't start with the foundation first, but that just means you'd have to pay extra close attention to details before you otherwise might have to in a standard "first floor then foundation" build. You would need to ensure auto foundation tools are disabled, and make heavy use of the reference display and wall alignment tools. You may encounter unintended software behavior if your foundation is on the first floor of your plan ... that is, if the software is looking for foundation information on the foundation layer. That said, I'd encourage you to build (or rebuild) your foundation on the foundation layer and then build up from there. Just start with a blank first floor, and then build a blank foundation floor. Just a small point of clarification: HD Architectural 2015 and HD Pro 2015 both allow up to 5 floors (the rest allow up to 3).

Hi Terry. Welcome to the forum. You've stumbled on an idiosyncracy of the Home Designer software's programming. For reasons only the programmers know, the automatic roof building tools do not build what would otherwise result in overlapping rake walls, as would be the case in a 3/12 pitch addition sharing a common wall against a 12/12 pitch main, especially if both sections have the same baseline height (this last bit is the key, I think, but isn't the only variable). A workaround, depending on what you need to show, is to build a second floor above the 12/12 pitch portion and set the ceiling height to zero in the upper floor's room dialog box. The fascia heights will be slightly off from one another between sections, but that is due mostly to the different roof pitches. This can be fixed in Pro with Pro's more advanced roof tools than are available in Suite. By building the second floor, your model will have addtional floor framing, and this may be undesirable ... again, depending on what you need to show. If additional floor framing is a problem, then don't build the second floor and instead raise the height of the main section a couple feet (play with the height value to see where it tips back to common pitch), and then manually add an attic wall on the attic level where the rake wall should be. It's good to have choices. Good luck.

It has been many, many years since I last used a Mac (no judgement), so I can't speak to their current state of tech. It sounds like you're looking for an efficient way to pan around the screen. On a PC, that is accomplished by using the middle mouse button. Back when I used a Mac (IIci), I had a 3rd party mouse (Kensington trackball, actually) that had multiple buttons, one of which could be programmed to emulate the PC's middle mouse button. You should know better than I if that is a workable solution for you, or if you have other readily available options as well. Alternatively, you should be able to turn scrollbars on/off using the toggle in the View menu. Good luck. Kbird1: After having used Pro 10 extensively, I find a few new features with 2015, but the biggest changes are in UI. Instead of tabs in the individual dialog boxes, there is a list box on the left side in which you may choose the tab-equivalent information to display and edit. I have not kept current on the changes between version 10 and 2015 ... meaning 2012 through 2014. The two big features I identified that helped make the decision to upgrade were, as you pointed out, multi-monitor support and mirror reflections in rendering. I also notice that the software is quicker in general, and noticably in renders ... probably due to being 64-bit and it taking advantage of multiple cores. YMMV

When you select an object in HD Pro 2015, the layer it is on will be displayed in the bottom right of the main window on the information bar (just to the left of the cursor coordinates). If you're able to select the image, verify which layer that the image is on. I did a quick test and imported a generic jpg to a blank plan; the layer it was placed upon is "CAD, Default." If that is true for you as well, turn off that layer in the Display Options dialog ... or turn off the layer that the image was placed upon as displayed on the information bar if it isn't by chance on CAD, Default. When selecting the image, you may need to "tab through" other selections until the image is selected. Hope this helps.

Mark, It appears from your photo that the piers are tapered on only one side. If true, and depending on which version of Home Designer software that you're using, you should be able to apply a wedge from the shapes library adjacent to a soffit, box, or slab object. You'll then need to apply an appropriate texture to each, and if the option is available in your software title, apply the textures with global mapping so they blend seamlessly across both objects. Hope this helps.